Before the Colors
by former-burning-example
Summary: "I won't let anything hurt you." One-shot. Rizzles. Complete.


It all started with blue.

You've always been partial to it. Blue is really quite nice.

You suppose she was happier then. In truth, you've only seen _this_ particular shade of blue in her mother's scrapbooks. It was some kind of family gathering. Festive. Fun. _Before_.

The way her smile seemed to demand the looker's attention was rather stunning, she had more color to her then. Maybe by extension that meant more life. Or less life. It all really depends on where you're standing. But that tank top was the color of sapphires, and somehow it made her smile brighter. Really the only thing wrong with the photograph was that you couldn't see her eyes, and that's not a problem at all seeing as they were closed in laughter.

It all depends on where you're standing.

The fact that there was once a time your best friend could lose herself in laughter baffles you. You've seen her laugh before. A daily occurrence, probably. If you were keeping track (which you weren't before, but you certainly are now). Her laughter is often short-lived and mostly sarcastic in nature. Never have you seen her so lost in a moment she must close her eyes just to keep from floating away. What a joy it must have been to have known her _before._

If you're moving in chronological order, you might as well move to green next.

Now green is a color you can forget yourself in. Whether it be a tropical rain forest smack on the equator or your neighbor's fresh cut grass. You quite like green. She must have too at one point. She must have loved the life-colored chlorophyll.

But last week you'd visited her apartment for lunch, and among the drear your heart teared up a bit for the house plants left out of her window sill. Exiled for their all-the-sudden high-maintenance.

You wish you would have known her before you _really_ knew her at all. Maybe you could have saved her plants. Maybe you could have saved her.

Green fades to brown, so it goes.

So... onward. (Where are you going with this?)

If you're being perfectly honest with yourself, the next color is far too much to handle. You believe red comes after green, but... red makes you sick to your stomach. It's calm and then it's hell, just like that. There's such a lack of transition. Even the rainbow itself gives you a buffer between such clashing colors- red and green. (It's like Christmas only you'd be sick to think that.) But you think that's the entire point of it all.

You've since thrown out everything red in your closet. In your home. Because sometimes colors are too much to bear.

Red twists you in knots and then straightens you out again. But you're never the same. Not at all.

You try not to picture your best friend in that basement, smacked in the back of the head with a two-by-four, seeing red. You try not to picture her dazed and frightened as he steadied the single light bulb swinging back and forth, the light penetrating through his fingers- red _._ And for the love of everything there is to love, you _DO NOT_ picture the the cool steel of a scalpel passing almost easily through the flesh of her palms, silver reflecting red.

You haven't touched one since. Not without more pairs of gloves than necessary and willing yourself not to fall apart right then and there. (You are lost to the world when you make an incision. Red is all you see.)

If you had your way, red would cease to exist. Natural selection would deem it a weak allele and thereby eradicate it from mankind.

You see red when your best friend rubs her scars and thinks you don't notice. So foolishly, you've lived all your life thinking red was the color best associated with anger. Red is the color of despair. Pain. Of fracture and brokenness. But also of a strength you cannot comprehend, yet your best friend seems to possess in large quantities.

After red, of course is yellow.

Police tape of the exact kind you and your friend duck under while exchanging the kind of banter that keeps both your minds on blue and off of red.

But the yellow you're concerned with is the yellow tape she was forced to roll under, strapped to a gurney. You wonder what she must have felt then, but try stop immediately because it's so completely intangible. But you can't stop yourself, not completely. It could have been relief, but you're fairly certain her mind was still trapped in that basement, fighting for her life.

Yellow... you always thought it was a happy color. But now you're not sure. Yellow has no one-word meaning to you. Unless there's a way to fit 'it's all over, but it's never _really_ going to end. It'll haunt you until your breath comes short, and your day doesn't reach that beautiful twenty-four hour mark' into a single word. But really, why on earth would there be a word for that?

After that the world- you included- saw purple. But to her, everything was grey.

You saw purple in her flesh. Damaged capillaries and the after effects of hemorrhaging. Trauma. Purple is trauma. You didn't see galaxies in her arms and neck. You saw a woman who fought back. You saw a woman who damaged herself not to be a hero, but to _do the right thing._

All of this you viewed from copies of pictures her mother has for a reason you didn't bother to ask. You cannot imagine why she would want to possess something depicting her daughter so... so _unlike_ herself. She wouldn't want her mother to see her like that, surely.

There was once a time when purple was your favorite color, but now you're running out of options. It's not just the colors. Everything holds a memory with the capability of being traced back to that day. But you'll ruin all your colors first because who needs them anyway?

There are no more colors at this point. You suppose you could amount orange to the color of his prison jumpsuit, or the fruit she'd peel a dozen times over in physical therapy just to get her hands to work _right._ Or pink like the scars marring those hands. But the thought's too heartbreaking to continue.

Now you see the world as you believe she does. Color-wise. You have absolutely no right to imagine what she's going through. How does she smile? You're barely scratching the surface, yet you feel these hopeless shades of grey might just crush you.

You roll over and take in her sleeping form beside you. The moonlight is just enough to give you something of a silhouette, but not enough to give color. Not that you would have noticed anyway. She comes over sometimes on nights like this. Nights you know he's terrifying her, even though he's locked away.

She whimpers in her sleep, troubled. Your heart aches for her because you want her to be as certain as you are that she's safe. But yellow's got a good hold on her tonight. She's back there in that basement, you know it.

It's amazing how as a child you used to crayon in coloring pages of Mickey Mouse, thinking it brought him to life, but now you fear bringing color back into your world will do just the opposite. What was once friendly and light is now more evil and sinister than anything you could ever imagine.

Another whimper. She stirs and curls into herself. Your best friend- your _only_ friend- is crying in her sleep, dreaming in color, and falling apart right before you. Right there you decide to break your rule of letting her fight her own demons. You reach out gently... gently, gentler than _that_. You don't want to frighten her, now do you?

You avoid her hands and neck because you know that's where he touched her. And you are many things, but you are not him. With that thought keeping your hand light, you rest it on her cheek, unsurprised to find it wet with her tears.

Tears are colorless.

She's allowed to shed them.

But blood. Blood is red. And you're still working on getting rid of red. You won't let her bleed.

You scoot closer and wrap your arm around her, tucking your fingers beneath her rib cage. You wipe the tears from her eyes with your thumb and whisper her name as it is.

"Jane."

Next on your list of things to decimate is 'Janie.' He called her that. You know he did. No, she didn't tell you, but you love your friend so much you saw it in the way she flinched when her mother or brothers would use the nickname. You knew. You _knew._

Her eyes open right away, and she tenses in your arms, confused and on-guard. But when she recognizes you, she softens and nuzzles her head into the curve of your neck, brown curls ticking your skin.

"I'm here," you say, making sure she's shaken all remnants of yellow. A color that might just be worse than red now that you think about it. They're all terrible. You cannot stand to look at them now or ever. Is it too much to ask for the world to drain of coloration just for a day, so you can hold her in your arms without worrying about green to depress you or blue to make you happy until purple gets there?

No, that's impossible. Really, it is. It would be terribly unfair if tomorrow morning a child woke up to find the blue stuffed animal clutched to their chest wasn't really blue anymore, or the pink soccer ball no longer held it's hue.

So you'll keep her safe. You've decided it already, there's no going back. You'll fight off orange and green, yellow, and purple and all the others, too. You won't let them hurt her.

"I'll make sure the colors can't get to you."

"What?"

Did you say that out loud? Uh-oh. She'll think you to be mad. Crazy. Delusional.

"Never mind, it's nothing. Go back to sleep, it's okay."

"I want to know."

It's not like saying no to her is your strong suit... So you tell her. You tell her how much you adore blue, but the weight and dread of the other colors pulls it into the madness. You tell her about green and how the plants in her apartment really do need to go in the garbage. Somehow, you choke out red and how much it terrifies you. Yellow comes next, and the tears you shed are everything but imaginary. Purple is a blur that mushes in with orange and pink, and grey brings end clarity. And at the end of it all, you take a breath and wait for her to leave or at least free herself from your arms.

Her silence leans neither positive nor negative, so natural to your nature, you _keep on talking._

"I don't want you to hurt. I'll... I'll take away all the colors, all of them. They won't hurt you. He won't hurt you. I... I won't let it happen. I won't let anything hurt you."

She taps her fingers in quick succession, trailing up your back slowly like she's doing a terrible job counting your vertebrae. You close you eyes for a moment and lose yourself in her like someone far away might in green, not knowing what it truly means.

She looks up at you, and even in the darkness you recognize brown in her eyes. Not like dead plants but a bit like the dirt floor of the basement she was rescued in. You've forgotten brown.

"Maura... you don't have to do all that..." she threads her fingers in your hair, delicate and whole. Her hands are almost like new, but she's still working on herself. "Please don't take away my colors..."

In the moonlight, you catch her eyes again, but just briefly before she shifts everything (forget about red, green, purple, and hurt. Jane Rizzoli is kissing you).

She pulls back a few inches, and somehow you know the look of her face is serious. She means every word.

"You are my colors."

.

.

.

 _end_


End file.
